Daddy Can't Dance, also known as White Men Can't Dance, is a film produced in 2012 by Screen Media Ventu.
It was directed by, and stars, Peter Vinal as Pete Weaver, a down-on-his-luck man who lost his job, lost his father, and must find a way to pay for his daughter's expensive medical treatment. He decides to enter a breakdancing competition for the money, but there's just one problem — he's not actually a good dancer.
Along the way, Pete gets into various other shenanigans. He has to keep the competition a secret from his wife, who has her own ideas about where he keeps going. He also has to find a way to get his job back after being unfairly fired.
This film includes examples of:
- All for Nothing: After getting the prize money from the competition, a charity organization winds up caring for Pete's daughter's hospital bills, making the entire competition pointless.
- Art Initiates Life: At the beginning of the movie, we see an artist in the park sketching an image, and a character from that image comes to life and interacts with her. It's implied from then on that the story is the invention of the artist, who paints over the scene at the end of the movie.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At the end, when the scene is being painted over, Pete notices the paint and begins to look appropriately freaked out and confused as his world gets covered in it.
- Dancing Is Serious Business: Everyone takes the dance competition very seriously, and the core drama of the movie revolves around Pete winning in order to save his daughter's life. At the end, we're treated to the 20 minute break dancing competition in full.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Pete befriends a boy he meets dancing in the street, first encouraging the boy to never give up his dreams, and then giving him his old dance shoes after he wins the contest.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ice Man had become Pete's dancing rival since the moment they met and got into a fight. Being younger and more athletic, Ice Man had a leg up in the competition, and taunted Pete throughout the film. However, at the end, when Ice Man wins the competition, he decides Pete deserves the money more and gives him the entire reward, much to everyone's shock.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Because Pete has to leave every day to train for the competition, and decides not to tell his wife about it, she suspects that he's cheating on her.
- Mood Whiplash: A scene of Pete and his family goofing around at breakfast immediately transitions into a somber scene of the mother and daughter at the hospital due to the daughter's health problems.
- Poor Communication Kills: Two subplots in this movie are prolonged thanks to Pete refusing to just speak up in a timely manner:
- He refuses to tell his wife about the dance competition because, in his own words, "you know how women are". This means that she sees all of his disappearances as him cheating on her, not helped by how he acts very shady each time.
- He gets fired from work because a corrupt coworker steals his invention, claims it as his own, and then frames Pete for stealing it from him. However, Pete had already patented the product before this point. Instead of just telling his boss, he let himself be fired, and it took two break-in attempts just to get to his boss's office and hand him the patent documents.
- Product Placement: The cup holder that Pete invents is an actual item that the actor/director invented, called the Drink Genie.
- Selective Enforcement: Pete is immediately fired and escorted off of the premises as soon as his coworker even claims that Pete is trying to steal his idea. When Pete finally bothers to show proof that the coworker is the one who stole his idea in the first place, the coworker is merely demoted.
- Slapstick: The humor in this movie is very physical, such as Pete falling on his face at work.
- Toilet Humor: While disguised as an old man trying to get back into his office, Pete makes a variety of fart and poop jokes as part of his "old man" character.
- Training Montage: Pete's week-long work-out session is told through a montage.
